Romantic Movement: Reaction Against the Ideas of the Enlightenment

Week 8: Brief Written Assignment
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Week 8: Brief Written Assignment.
Romantic Movement as a Reaction Against the Ideas of the Enlightenment
The Romantic Movement of the late 18th Century, which transitioned into the first half of the 19th Century, formed an integral part of many people in Western Europe. Most of the experiences faced by these people could not be left unexpressed, and this created a new culture which was later known as Romanticism. With its plea for the liberation of human emotions and the free expression of personality, Romanticism challenged the Enlightenment's stress on rationalism. Although primarily a literary and artistic movement, Romanticism also permeated philosophy and political thought, particularly conservatism and nationalism (Perry, 2011, pg 311).
Rationalism was the dominant idea that propagated the philosophies of the Enlightenment. Once Romanticism became dominant, philosophes said the romantics had turned flesh-and-blood human beings into soulless thinking machines (Perry, 2011, pg 311). The romantics believed that for human beings to be restored to their true nature, to become whole again, they must be emancipated from the tyranny of excessive intellectualizing; the feelings must be nurtured and expressed (Perry, 2011, pg 312).
What were the attitudes of conservatives and liberals toward the Enlightenment and the French Revolution?
After the Enlightenment and the French Revolution in the late 18th Century, most traditional leaders who were reinstated desired to protect themselves from future revolutions and attacked the reformists' spirit philosophers of the time. These attacks resulted in conservatism ...